Andrei,
The poster who mentioned isolating the A/C compressor on your 74
Imperial by closing the service valves was thinking of Ford products
that used the in-line compressor. Your Imperial does not have such a
compressor and there is no way to isolate it from the rest of the A/C
system. Prior to removing the compressor you MUST discharge the system,
hopefully in an environmentally-responsible way.
Regarding your question about refrigerant QUALITY... When I was doing
work for GM several years ago I developed some service manual text for
their ACR4 unit. (Air conditioning recovery and recycling and something
else). This machine is hooked up to the A/C system low and high side
service fittings and it sucks the refrigerant out. The refrigerant is
pumped into a 50# tank under the ACR4. With recovery complete, the
technician operates a valve or two to begin the recycling process.
Basically, the used refrigerant (liquid form) is pumped through a big
filter/desiccant element to remove impurities and moisture. Air, being
non-condensable, is also isolated and vented. You may want to visit a
GM dealer to have the R-12 removed from your system using this machine.
As the price of R-12 skyrocketed people started introducing all kind of
crazy "refrigerants" into their cars. How about propane? Or butane?
Or R-22? Or whatever is in that canister I use at work. Not a good
idea for many reasons. One of them is that legitimate service personnel
can't tell what's in the system and bad stuff can instantly contaminate
a nearly full canister of used pure R-12 refrigerant rendering it
useless.
So GM attached a unit to the top of the ACR4 unit that sampled recovered
refrigerant before allowing it to enter the recycling tank. The
sampling unit had some solenoids, lights, and high tech stuff to test
the incoming refrigerant numerous ways. Bad refrigerant shut down the
recovery process. The tech was then supposed to recover the
contaminated stuff into a special yellow tank for disposal.
Thousands of these units were sold, but i don't know how many remain in
service. Maintenance costs were high and I suspect that many units were
retired as R-12 systems disappeared from dealership service bays.
Independents garages could buy the units, too. They were made by Kent
Moore, I think. Check with an A/C specialty outfit near you.
Pete in PA
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 15:14:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrei Khabarov <akhabarov_imperial@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: IML: air conditioning pump removal
Reply-To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Is there any way to evaluate quality of current
refrigerant and decide if I need to replace it?
It's R12 unfortunately. And If it's enough good
I prefer not to change it.
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